Cars, Cotton, Coffee and…Money Laundering?

If you’ve been affected by just one of the lawsuits featured in this newsletter, you’re probably doing OK – although a bit inconvenienced. If you were affected by all of them, however, you probably drove to work in your SRX wondering why your headlights haven’t been working properly, sipping a cup of “Kona” coffee that isn’t as good as it should be, wearing a cotton shirt that isn’t itchy but isn’t quite as soft as it should be – and oh yeah, that bank you invested in just lost a ton of money because of a whole money laundering fiasco. If this is the case, then I apologize for your awful morning. But, there’s hope! Read on for more.

It is believed that a defect in 2010-2015 Cadillac SRX vehicles allows the headlights to accumulate so much moisture that they no longer output light. This condensation issue can also bring about electrical shorts and cause the bulbs to burn out – an obvious danger for drivers taking to the open road at night. Attorneys are now trying to get a class action rolling to force GM to issue a recall, replace any defective parts, and provide compensation for previous repairs as well as for the cars’ loss in value. If this sounds like something that happened to you, share your story here.And, on a personal note, I used to drive a Kia where the seals on its tail lights couldn’t keep water out, so I know how you feel.

Money laundering. Thanks to the plethora of shows we watch about drug trafficking and other shady dealings, we may not know exactly how it works but we do know it’s a method of making cash through illegal methods that look legitimate. And when it was discovered that Danske Bank engaged in this practice between 2012 and March 2016, the company’s stock tanked, leaving many investors in a bad place and out quite a bit of money. In fact, Danske’s poor business decisions allegedly lost its investors a total of about $2.54 billion in market capitalization. A class action has already been filed seeking to help investors recover the money they may have lost in securities, but attorneys are looking for more people willing to take action against Danske Bank. If you were one of those unfortunate investors, you can read more here.

We want to give our faithful companions the best we can, but that becomes increasingly difficult when companies aren’t entirely honest about what’s going into their dog food. Attorneys are now investigating whether certain dog food products – specifically, Freshpet Select Slice and Serve Roll, Iams Proactive Health Sensitive Skin and Stomach, and Nature's Recipe Grain Free – are up to snuff. The products were advertised as being either free of grain and/or corn – but, according to independent testing, may actually contain the very ingredients they were supposed to exclude. Attorneys believe that consumers, as a result, overpaid for their dog food and may now have a chance to get their money back through a class action lawsuit. Read on for more.

Our settlements page is always being updated. Have you checked to see if you're covered by any open settlements? You can also check out the latest settlements as they happen by following us on Twitter.

If you had a cup of Kona coffee outside of Hawaii’s Big Island and didn’t think it was anything special, it may just not be your thing – or you may have been given a cheap knockoff. In fact, according to a proposed class action recently filed by a group of Kona coffee farmers, the amount of “Kona” coffee you can find everywhere from Costco to Amazon is well, impossible. Here’s the math – it’s coffee math, so it’s cool. Legitimate Kona growers produce roughly 2.7 million pounds of green Kona coffee per year. This may sound like a lot, but it only accounts for 0.01% of the total coffee production worldwide – which is close to 20 billion pounds. In short, there isn’t enough of the actual product in the entire world for everyone to be selling the real thing – meaning someone must be lying about their coffee. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go make a cup of the (probably subpar) “Kona” blend I still have in the cabinet and just dream about the real thing. Here’s the rest of the story.

Lululemon has been accused in a new lawsuit of misrepresenting certain products as being made with a high percentage of premium Pima cotton when they mostly contain a less exquisite cotton blend. Not familiar with Pima cotton? That’s OK, neither was I until a couple hours ago. Essentially, the length of each cotton fiber (called staple in the business, apparently) when it’s taken out of the boll directly contributes to the quality and softness of a fabric. Pima is a long staple cotton only grown in three regions across the world. It’s good stuff, so when a company tries to convince its customers that its products are made with mostly high-quality materials when they really aren’t, people justifiably take issue with that – especially when paying more for an inferior product. For more on the case, check out our blog.

~ Forward to a friend ~

Know someone who might be interested in our newsletter? Why not forward this email to them?